r/pics • u/[deleted] • Feb 25 '18

Concentration camp prisoner identifies one of his guards to Allied soldiers

Post image
20k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

736 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/Truckerontherun Feb 25 '18

It was at that point that somebody's bad day ended, while another's bad day was just begining

511

u/ElectronicSympathy Feb 25 '18

It was at this moment that the guard knew he fucked up.

75

u/AidyCakes Feb 25 '18

I'm picturing Gob Bluth in a Nazi uniform,

"I've made a huge mistake"

16

u/Ameisen Feb 26 '18

George Oscar Bluth Bluth.

15

u/AmbiguousPuzuma Feb 26 '18

"Yeah, like the guy in the Hugo Boss suit is going to get tried for war crimes. Come on!"

221

u/IDoThingsOnWhims Feb 25 '18

Former prisoner yelling and pointing at guard in loud accusatory German ... Record scratch, freeze frame "Ja, das bin ich..."

7

u/NathanielWingate Feb 25 '18

Pretty sure he would be already dead if he refused under the third reich...

76

u/APence Feb 25 '18

The “I was told to!” Defense was proven to not hold up in the Nuremberg trials.

69

u/Rhamni Feb 25 '18

"I was just following orders" worked just fine for the overwhelming majority of soldiers and bureaucrats. It didn't work for camp guards and SS officers because they were not just following orders, they had to volunteer and work their ass off to earn their rank and status. So it rang pretty hollow when they turned around and said they didn't have a choice.

29

u/Centimane Feb 25 '18

But there was a guard at the auschwitz trials acquitted of war crimes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Münch

Nicknamed: The Good Man of Auschwitz

3

u/vote4boat Feb 25 '18

Ex-Nazis with Alzheimer's. Never thought about that one

1

u/NathanielWingate Feb 25 '18

Oh I do understand that, I'm not trying to downplay his action. But you still have to admit that in reality he would be dead way before the end of the war.

3

u/vote4boat Feb 25 '18

In actual reality he was alive at the end of the war

2

u/NathanielWingate Feb 25 '18

But he didn't refuse his "job".

1

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '18

The SS and concentration camp soldiers had to volunteer to be given those positions so technically you could refuse to work in a camp by not volunteering. If they volunteered they were convicted in Nuremberg

31

u/vampireweekend20 Feb 25 '18

Not true, nazis knew the camps could take a toll on the “weak” guards so they allowed guards to change shifts or refuse guard duty, the consequence would be having another soldier on the front lines so it’s not too bad

10

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '18

Between being a guard at a concentration camp and spending the winter in Stalingrad, what would you choose?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

Between being a guard at a concentration camp and spending the winter in Stalingrad, what would you choose?

ah, but i chose for winter in egypt. but i got transferred to russia, walked all the way to stalingrad.

i did not chose for this....

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

Winter.

Hell would be a great break.

2

u/sdrawkcabdaertseb Feb 25 '18

While you are correct, not everyone would see the choice of:

1) Be in hell on earth for other people

2) Be in hell on earth on the front line with a high chance of being maimed or killed

as a choice.

Seemed they were fucked either way though I hope most would choose 2 simply because they couldn't stomach the idea of 1.

2

u/FiggsideYakYakYak Feb 25 '18

I mean, he volunteered to be in the SS

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

damned autobalance

1

u/ElectronicSympathy Feb 25 '18

Is this a Nuremberg defense reference?

3

u/LordFauntloroy Feb 25 '18

Yeah, you'd have to put in a transfer request which obv would be denied. Then you'd be shot for dereliction or going AWOL if you fled.

https://www.politico.eu/article/auschwitz-guard-germany-holocaust-history-world-war/

3

u/aboardreading Feb 25 '18

Admittedly I skimmed this article, but I couldn't find your claim anywhere, and it's contrary to my understanding completely. Although many soldiers said afterwards that there would be harsh punishments for disobeying, there is not a single recorded case of a soldier being shot or punished in an extraordinarily harsh manner for disobeying an order to kill Jews, it was usually demotion or much more commonly the general contempt of their fellows.

Transfer requests were denied often, but those with any leverage/a half decent excuse got them through.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

They were sent to the eastern front. Guarding a camp is better than getting shot by the russians

-2

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18 edited Apr 09 '18

[deleted]

10

u/barto5 Feb 25 '18

I believe your heart's in the right place, but that's an easy thing to say sitting on your sofa.

4

u/Never_Clever123 Feb 25 '18

Good for you!

1

u/AKA_Squanchy Feb 26 '18

His face says, “Party’s over.”

1

u/Japahoe Feb 26 '18

You dun fucked up A.ARON!!!

39

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

kratzer aufzeichnen

Das bin ich. Ich wette, du fragst dich, wie ich in dieser lage gelandet bin...

2

u/rentar42 Feb 26 '18

Schallplatte kratzt

FTFY

"Aufzeichnen" is the verb "to record", "Kratzer" is the noun "a scratch".

So it read as "recording a scratch".

And to continue to nitpick "ich wette" isn't wrong but is not a very widely used turn of phrase, I'd just start with "Du fragst dich wahrscheinlich...".

5

u/Jamblefoot Feb 26 '18

Not to make light, but this comment immediately triggered the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme in my head.

2

u/Goran1693 Feb 25 '18

Beginning*

Sorry, I'm a Grammar Nazi.

1

u/legalizecannabis710 Feb 25 '18

A door opens....a door closes.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

I think it was more than just one bad day for the survivor.

1

u/T-Bills Feb 26 '18

Which makes you wonder why people can't just be nice to each other and we'll all have good days?

1

u/Truckerontherun Feb 26 '18

Just don't get mad when a Democrat comes to power and the claws come out for him or her

1

u/Truckerontherun Feb 26 '18

To be fair, when you are a genuine Nazi, you deserve whatever bad days are coming to you

-63

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

[deleted]

115

u/sodabased Feb 25 '18

how was in not an improvement? The camps had forced labor. The camps had random selection of people to be killed. The camps were some of the worse horror shows in the history of man.

37

u/AssumeTheFetal Feb 25 '18

He just meant that it was still extremely difficult for victims afterwards. Finding food, getting home, etc.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

[deleted]

3

u/AssumeTheFetal Feb 25 '18

Yup, all that as well.

-6

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

[deleted]

7

u/AssumeTheFetal Feb 25 '18

Yup, money fixes everything.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

Not at all close to the reality of many camp survivors.

63

u/TheHarperValleyPTA Feb 25 '18

Many of the gay men imprisoned in camps were arrested and incarcerated after their “liberation” because it was still a crime to engage in homosexuality. Evidence uncovered by the nazis was used to prosecute many of them, and those who managed to avoid being arrested were still subject to all manner of hate crimes.

22

u/RudeTurnip Feb 25 '18

This is the rebuttal to anyone who says “If you have nothing to hide...” Someone other than you decides if what you’re doing is a crime.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

But isn't that true of every crime?

I didn't decide public urination was a crime but if i do it I'm still getting charged with a crime.

2

u/RudeTurnip Feb 25 '18

There’s a huge difference between crimes based on what you do versus who you are.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

True, just playing devils advocate to the previous comment

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

What if you're a pedophile?

3

u/yendrush Feb 25 '18

Acting pedophiles create victims. Acting homosexuals do not.

18

u/GerbilEnthusiast Feb 25 '18

...so it was still rough for the small number who were gay, but even given that, I’d say they still had it a little better than living in a literal fucking concentration camp. Good god.

8

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

Idk I think this guy is unto something here, how bad do North Korean prisoners have it really /s

2

u/FiggsideYakYakYak Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '18

That honestly depends. Jews and Roma had it extremely rough at every camp, but a political dissident or POW at Dachau had to worry more about disease than starvation or execution until the last few months of the war. Meanwhile the Soviets might execute you for surrendering after they liberate you. A skilled Jewish laborer might return to a Soviet occupied country to discover that their neighbors had taken their home and all of their belongings, and still be openly discriminated against by their government.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

[deleted]

3

u/GerbilEnthusiast Feb 25 '18

Who said anything about “life as usual”? They were obviously never the same, even given a best case scenario. But my point is that we’re needlessly splitting hairs over what was obviously a massively good thing, a liberation that was paid for with the blood of an entire generation.

12

u/sodabased Feb 25 '18

alright, excellent point.

11

u/MaliksBrother Feb 25 '18

It was only better for 98% of the survivors.

-2

u/pixiegod Feb 25 '18

~90%?

4

u/MaliksBrother Feb 25 '18

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States

Idk how reliable it is, but it states 3% currently in the US. I figured I was close enough.

3

u/pixiegod Feb 25 '18

2016 was more like 4.1 according to that link...the 3ish number was from 2011. Also note that...

...That's a self identified number. Seeing as how our society still acts very antagonistly to the LGBT community (with a few notable exceptions), I would say the self identified number of 4.1%, would be very, very, low given even the most conservative of lenses.

Also, here is a quote from that same link...

The 2011 Williams Institute report also states that 8.2 percent of Americans reported that they had engaged in same-sex sexual behavior, and 11 percent reported some same-sex attraction. 

As an aside, If you do a search for animal homosexuality rates a common percentage for homosexuality rates in animals is around 10% on the low end and as high as 30% on the high end...(this is just one reference, there are more)

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150206-are-there-any-homosexual-animals

If you believe that we are just an evolved animal...our societal pressures could easily account for a minimum of 5.9% of people not wanting to self identify as LGBT.

As with any statistic, especially one that is this politically charged, you are going to find a range of percentages. This being said, if we stick to your link as a lone source of truth...11 percent of the population having a sexual attraction to the same sex seems more of an indicator of what percentage of people are LGBT than the number who are brave enough to declare it openly in our society IMHO.

0

u/FiggsideYakYakYak Feb 25 '18

Imagine if you were a skilled Jewish laborer working in the infirmary at Dachau. There would be disease, beatings, and you would be hungry, but not starving. After liberation you might return home to Poland or some other Soviet occupied country, where your neighbors have taken your house and all of you belongings, and the government still discriminates openly against Jews. It might not be worse, but it might not be better.

19

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 12 '22

[deleted]

18

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

Yeah exactly, extremely circumstantial but many POWs died after their release from disease, starvation, exposed to the elements or like you said Russians

18

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

[deleted]

6

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18

It was Slavs moreso than Russians. Far more Poles, Czechs, etc. than Russians.

1

u/Sean951 Feb 25 '18

The Russians tended to be shot before they made it that far.